


In His Hands

by anotherlongstoryshort



Series: Impressions [2]
Category: Star Trek: Alternate Original Series (Movies)
Genre: BAMF Bones, BAMF Kirk, Gen, Implied Sexual Content, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Missing Scenes, brotp for life
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-02-28
Updated: 2016-02-28
Packaged: 2018-05-23 19:20:08
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 1,906
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6127412
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/anotherlongstoryshort/pseuds/anotherlongstoryshort
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A doctor swears first to do no harm. Even if their best friend is REALLY asking for it.</p><p>On the day Jim Kirk introduces himself, Leonard McCoy throws up on his shoes.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Oh no, I've made a series...

On the day Jim Kirk introduces himself, Leonard McCoy throws up on his shoes. 

 

He felt bad about it afterwards but in the moment it was all he could do to not repeat the reflex. 

He had expected the kid, beat-up, attractive and leather-clad as he was, to pitch a full on hissy fit. Instead, he seemed to feel more sorry for Leonard than his boots and spent the whole transporter flight trying to keep his mind off the crash they were definitely going to have. 

("Aren't doctors supposed to have a steady nerve?") 

The trip was hellish. The landing was worse. After that came the vertigo of being back on solid ground. By the time McCoy could tell five fingers from three, only stragglers were left in the hangar bay. 

 

* * *

On the day Cadet Kirk renames him 'Bones', Dr. McCoy gets into a barfight. 

 

Maybe it was the father in him or the fact he was a doctor. Maybe at heart he was just a Southern gentleman after all. Whatever the case, Len really took issue with guys who wouldn’t take ‘no’ for an answer. 

He hadn’t exactly meant to cause trouble, just to get the shaved gorilla to remember some manners. 

That’s probably why he ended up on the floor, trying to stem a bleeding nose. 

( _Shoulda hit first._ ) 

Before he could stumble to his feet, Monkey Boy’s attention was grabbed by another cadet blocking his path to the quickly exiting girl. 

“Hi, Jim Kirk. Which zoo did you escape from?” 

What followed was something that might be described as an old-fashion schooling. Kirk swerved around intoxicated swings and gave the doctor time to get up, at which point he tripped the ape’s ankles and sent him down. 

The second guy who tried to jump him met McCoy’s fist. 

The blonde watched the pair retreat with surprise and swiveled his head around to Len. 

“McCoy, right? With the…” He mimed throwing up. 

“Yeah, sorry about that. Name’s Leonard.” 

“… yeah, no. Lenny?" He sniggered. "I’m gonna call you Doc. Or Hot Stuff.” 

“Please don’t.” 

Kirk grinned, wide and bright. “So, Bones, where’d a bonafide nice guy like you learn to throw a punch?” 

 

* * *

On the day Jim moves in, Leonard calls his daughter. 

 

“Remind me again why you didn’t have a room to begin with?” 

“Last minute recruit, Bones! Can’t afford to be picky.” 

After two weeks of camping between the beds of sexual exploits and McCoy’s inexplicable spare room, Jim had finally called in a favour from his Captain friend and gotten assigned to the dorms normally reserved for the medical track. 

“And remind me again how you know Pike?” 

Jim shrugged distractedly, emptying the contents of his backpack onto his new bed. “Family thing.” 

“Uh- _huh_.” 

“How ‘bout you? Your, uh, what’s-her-name. Joanna! She excited about her dad going to space?” 

Bones snorted. “I’m sure she’s thrilled.” 

He didn’t expect the sudden quiet. Or the serious expression. “You haven’t spoken to her yet?” 

The doctor shifted uncomfortably. “She, uh, she made it pretty clear that I’m not her favourite person right now.” 

“She’s a kid, man. And she’s angry. That’s not gonna get better if you don’t at least try.” 

He looked and sounded sincere, prompting a furrowed brow and McCoy’s curiosity. “Since when are you an expert on kids?” 

“Trust me, Bones. You’ll regret it if you don’t.” 

 

* * *

On the day Kirk fails the Kobyashi Maru, McCoy gets a promotion. 

 

"Oh, this is pathetic." The blinds were drawn, blocking out the evening light, and Leonard regarded the bedridden lump that was his roommate. 

It groaned when poked. 

"I failed, Bones." 

McCoy sighed and folded his arms. "Jim, it's the Kobyashi Maru. Everyone fails. As far as I can tell, that seems to be the point." 

"Yeah, but..." 

"But you're Jim Kirk and you don't believe in no-win scenarios, I've heard." 

"Exactly." 

The doctor rolled his eyes. "Welcome to fallibility. I'd stick around to massage your ego but my shift starts in ten minutes." 

Jim rolled onto his side and squinted at him. "You just got back." 

"For a change of clothes. The newest Attending always gets stuck with the nightshift." 

In the blink of an eye, his roommate's expression went from hangdog to excited puppy. "The board passed you? That's amazing!" 

"Well, aren't you in a changeable mood." Bones drawled, unsurprised and grudgingly touched, fighting down a smile of his own. 

"Eh, who cares about a dumb sim? We gotta celebrate – tomorrow! Shots are on me. Besides..." He grinned devilishly. "I can always take it again, right?" 

 

* * *

On the day Bones finds out, he disappears. 

 

They had argued for weeks about Jim picking a primary Starfleet physician. He had been oddly reluctant, despite Bones' repeated demands that he stop messing with him and sign the goddamn form already. 

("Who else is gonna keep your sorry ass alive, Jim?") 

When the file finally arrived, he regretted that. When he saw his friend's life spelled out in thoughtless medical jargon, he understood. 

He had expected broken knuckles and allergic reactions. He had even had his suspicions about the childhood beatings. 

But the starvation. The bullet wounds and burns. The kinds of injuries only a soldier should have. Other kinds that no one should have. 

My god, he was supposed to have been a teenager, not a warrior. 

Jim found him clinging to a barstool, whiskey number I-don't-know-anymore on its way down his throat. 

("Bones, tell me you're not crying. It's not that big a deal.") 

Until his dying day, the good doctor would deny initiating the hug. 

 

* * *

On the day Kirk beats the Kobyashi Maru, McCoy is actually proud. 

 

He did it. The smug son of a bitch actually did it. 

Oh, it was definitely all kinds of hinky and there was no way in hell it had nothing to do with the unintelligible magnitude of handwritten coding all over their quarters. 

But he did it. 

Goddamn. Now he really  _was_  gonna be insufferable. 

 

* * *

On the day Captain Kirk saves a planet, his CMO loses too many lives. 

 

Dr Puri had been a good man, a good doctor. Leonard had worked closely with him in the hospital at HQ. 

He hadn't wanted his job but in a blink of an eye it was his. And he didn't need some goddamn hobgoblin spelling it out for him. 

The whole thing was a mess. Officers and cadets, injured or dead, arriving in droves to a medbay half-demolished. Then Vulcans, of all things, glaring at anyone who dare try to touch them, taking up beds and faking airs of disinterest at their bleeding wounds and devastated planet. 

A bridge full of bright-eyed lunatics, an enemy who'd lost more screws than kept and then hours of endless, meticulous surgery, trying to save Pike's spine. 

When it was over and he could finally retreat to a bed and blissful sleep, it occurred to Len that he probably couldn't handle a crisis half so well if he weren't friends with a certain James T. Kirk. 

It was definitely the reason every death felt personal. 

 

* * *

On the day Jim is awarded the Enterprise, Bones feels an ulcer coming on. 

 

After all the pomp and circumstance, the new Captain was given leave to select his elite command crew. 

Now, even though Leonard had gotten over his aviophobia, he still wasn't a fan of space travel. He had meant every word when he signed up and still stood by them. 

("Space is disease and danger wrapped in darkness and silence.") 

But that didn't mean for a second that when Jim hemmed and hawed about asking  _M'Benga_  to be CMO, McCoy didn't punch his arm and appropriate the assignment form. 

He did his best to ignore the laughing, though.


	2. Chapter 2

On the day Jim dies, Bones can't let him go. 

 

One look at the corpse that used to be James Kirk and he had to turn away. He couldn't check for a pulse and declare him dead. He couldn't do his _damn_ job, not this time. 

The mere thought of touching that lifeless, irradiated skin and finding it as cold as in his nightmares turned his stomach. 

McCoy (not Bones anymore, not without Jim) sank into a seat and stared at nothing. He felt the moisture gathering in his eyes and had little inclination to stop it, onlookers be damned. 

Dr Marcus was crying somewhere behind him and what the _hell._ You might be pretty, darlin', but you didn't know Jim. You don't get to mourn him like he was important to you. 

( _He was important to me._ ) 

His hand raised of its own accord, drifting to his forehead. Maybe if he could block it out, it wouldn't be real. If he closed his eyes it might just be a dream. 

A gurgle at his elbow brought him up short. 

He stared at the tribble, the dead tribble, the  _impossibly breathing_ , _squeaking_  tribble. 

Leonard wouldn't believe his eyes if his monitors weren't beeping at him, confirming the unbelievable and lighting a spark of hope in his gut. He grabbed at the screen, incredulous. 

But there it was. Life, confirmed. 

" _Get me a cryotube! Now!_ " 

The order was yelled into the mournful quiet of medbay and _thank god_ for competent staff, for M'Benga and Christine Chapel because it took only a moment of surprise before a tube was being selected and wheeled into place. 

His plan came out in a rush, barked at everyone near. Superhuman blood, regenerative properties, it  _had_  to work. 

"Get this guy outta the cryotube –  _keep him in an induced coma_. We're gonna put Kirk inside. It's our only chance to preserve his brain function." 

(Relax, doctor, this is familiar. _This_ part of your job you can do.) 

McCoy dredged up the knowledge from a half-forgotten theory class. Cryogenics were old-school, ancient in fact. It had gone the same way as asthma inhalers and chemotherapy. 

Think,  _think_. 

Glycerol injections to prevent arterial damage, dry ice for rapid cooling, slow the rate of decay. Intestines always went first, he knew, racing the brain, kidneys and lungs to self-destruction. 

(The radiation chamber was hot, so was engineering, how much time did they have...?) 

174 degrees then get him in the tube, get him in the tube, get Jim... 

"How much of Khan's blood is left?" The question startled him to clarity.

"None." He snarled, refusing to be cowed or slowed down. Spock, _Spock,_ he was chasing Khan down, he could... 

"Enterprise to Spock... Spock!" No answer.  _Perfect_ timing for the hobgoblin to lose it, as always. 

No, he had to prioritise Jim. The bridge could handle getting the blood. One problem at a time. 

There was a hubbub of activity around the tube, the captain being secured in place. Leonard completed the process frantically, a timer in his head calculating the possibilities. 

A minute, just a minute too long and Jim wouldn't thank them for bringing him back with a compromised cerebral cortex. 

"Activate the cryogenic sequence." 

It was mercifully quick, taking only seconds to coat his friend's disturbingly still features in frost. 

 _Step one, over and done with._  

"McCoy to Bridge, I can't reach Spock. I need Khan alive. You get that son of a bitch back on board  _right now_. 

"I think he can save Kirk." 

It had to work. It had to. 

 _For Jim_ , he pleaded to the universe, something he wasn't exactly famous for.  _Please, one more miracle, for him_.


End file.
